Insights
by n00btmntfan
Summary: After Master Splinter tells the four turtles to start journaling as part of their personal growth, Raphael rebels and refuses to do it. However, feeling vindictive and mischievous he decides to read his brothers' - and Splinter's - journals. It doesn't turn out to be as much fun as he expected it to be, and he learns some things about his Sensei that he never knew. 2012 universe.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: If you like this, please check out my other story, "My Sons, My Everything." Please enjoy! Disclaimer: I do not own any of the TNMT characters.

Raphael straightened the sheets and blankets on his bed. It was the closest he ever came to making it. In the morning, he left the bedclothes an untidy mess, but in the evening he straightened them so that his feet would not stick out.

With a yawn, he removed his belt and laid his sai on the nightstand. As he started to undo his elbow pads, there was a knock at the door.

"Can't a guy get any privacy?" he muttered as he went to open the door. He expected to find Mikey, all worked up from his latest horror story – but to his surprise, it was Master Splinter. "Oh. Hey, Sensei. What's up?"

"I came to see if you have been following the writing assignment that I gave you last week," Splinter said. "I believe I told you that I would be checking in on it."

The writing assignment? That lame thing? When Splinter said he expected them to start keeping journals, Raphael had hoped that he would somehow forget about it. He should have known that Splinter never – and really, never – forgot about anything.

"I can see from the expression on your face that you have not," Splinter said, furrowing his brow.

Raphael growled in frustration. "Sensei, it's pointless. I have nothing to write about. What good does it do, anyway?"

"As I told you last week, keeping a record of your activities provides insight into your personal growth. It can help you to learn from your mistakes. It helps you solve problems. And—for you especially, it can help you deal with anger, if you choose to write about the things that anger you."

"And you're going to read it to make sure we've been doing it? Why the heck would I want you to look at anything that personal?"

"Raphael, you know I said that I would only glance from a distance to see if you had been writing, not to read what you have written."

"I'm not the writing type. It's not my thing. I can solve problems and learn from my mistakes without writing a stupid essay every day."

Splinter frowned, a hint of anger flashing through his eyes. "I said you only need write even one sentence per day. It can be as simple as, 'Today, Master Splinter reminded me that if I do not follow his assignments, I will be grounded until I do.'" With that, Splinter turned and left.

Seriously? Raphael wanted to scream at Splinter. Was he seriously this lame? Couldn't he have given him a useful assignment, such as beating up Leo or Donnie or Mikey every single day to cope with his anger?

Well, he already did that, but nevertheless.

Hmph. Had those dorks actually been doing Splinter's idiotic assignment? He chuckled at the thought of Donnie keeping a diary full of nothing more than April's name surrounded by little hearts. And what the heck was Mikey going to be writing about? Cottage cheese demons? Leo's would probably be full of junk about how his brothers never followed orders and crud about Space Heroes.

An evil thought crossed Raphael's mind. What were those shell-brains actually writing about? Were their journals "helpful?" If they were just as dumb as he suspected they were, then he could at least feel better about doing the pointless cruddy assignment himself. He would wait until the others were asleep and find their journals to read. Maybe he'd even make some popcorn.

And just to get even with Splinter—and maybe call him out on being a hypocrite, he would see if Splinter was following his own advice.

Silently, Raph snuck into Donnie's lab to see if the egg-head was keeping his journal in here. Sure enough, in the top desk drawer was one of the leather bound journals that Splinter had given them seven days ago. He sat down at the desk and flipped the book open to the first page.

_Today was a nightmare. I tried balancing the chemical formula that I think might be the key to a retro mutagen and it turned out I had the number of carbon atoms completely screwed up. I had to solve a seven-equation algebraic matrix just to discover this. Looking back at the diagram I drew…_

Seriously? This was not even close to entertaining. Figures the nerd would journal about chemistry and what not. Raphael flipped to a different entry.

_Metalhead is just about fixed up now. The poor little guy really got his circuits fried from those squirrelanoids we fought off. I hate seeing him all mangled up like that, but now he's close to being back to his adorable little self. _

Oh. This was pure gold.

_He really is a little cutie. I can't say that for many of my inventions… _

Raphael was in tears from trying to hold in the laughter. He couldn't even finish reading this entry or he would lose it. He flipped the page to see if Donnie had written any more love letters to his little robot friend.

_I wonder if April will ever forgive us. _

Oh, boy, here we go with April. The little hearts would pop up at any moment.

_I mean – we mutated her father. I'm not sure how we could have avoided it, since the battle was so intense. I keep going over the situation in my mind again and again. Was it my fault? _

Suddenly, Raphael's stomach turned. He felt enormously guilty. The mutagen spill was equally his fault. No. Forget about fault. It was the Kraang's stupid fault. Why was Donnie blaming himself?

But for all of that, Raphael couldn't shake the feeling of guilt.

"This is stupid," he muttered. He slammed the book shut and stuffed it back in the desk drawer. "Let's see what kind of junk Mikey's been writing."

Mikey was a heavy sleeper, so this would be a cakewalk. He crept into his little brother's room. It was a complete wreck. Finding the journal would be a task for an excavation team. Luckily, he spied the leather-bound book lying on a stack of pizza boxes. With a wicked grin, Raphael swiped it and ran out to the living room to read it.

Immediately, there was an obstacle. Mikey's handwriting was practically indecipherable. But after looking at it for a few moments, Raphael was able to figure it out.

_Dude I cant believe Splinter wants us to keep a journal and stuff this is going to be totally awesome. Its like I'm an author. Totally cool rite? Cuz what if someday its found and everyone will all be like whoa dudes look its a journal by a turtle dude and its all totally crazy and stuff. This Michelangelo dude sounds so awesome and handsome I bet the ladies really loved him. _

Yeah. This was totally Mikey's handiwork. Totally crazy and stuff was exactly right. Rolling his eyes, Raphael flipped to the next page.

_Why dont my bros ever give me any credit? There always being so mean and treat me like I'm just a dumb idiot. Dont they know I have feelings and stuff?_

Oh brother. Flip to the next page.

_So there was this chick on tv the other day and she totally had the sweetest juiciest melons I have ever seen. Serious cantaloupes man. Like there is no way those are found in nature. _

Raphael grinned. He felt a sudden surge of affection for his little brother. He didn't realize that Mikey had started paying attention to women's…"produce." He always thought of Mikey as a clueless little kid. Well, he was still a clueless little kid, just now he had hormones thrown in the mix. What was even more impressive was that he was actually able to spell the word cantaloupe correctly. Well, if anything is important in spelling, it's knowing how to spell euphemisms for female anatomy.

He flipped the page. The next entry was only one sentence.

_I am so lonely. _

Raphael felt like he had been punched in the gut. Lonely? How could Mikey be lonely when he had three brothers around…

Three brothers who treated him like a dumb idiot.

Well, he is a dumb idiot, Raphael thought. But…lonely?

He had enough. He shut the journal and stealthily put it back into Mikey's room, placing it on the pizza box. He looked at his sleeping brother. With a sigh, he whispered, "I love you, man." Then, he left.

Did he really want to look at Leo's?

Well, duh. Of course he did. Nothing Leo wrote could surprise him, since it was sure to be full of whiny crap he'd already heard before.

Raphael was a little nervous as he entered Leo's room. Leo was kind of a light sleeper. Hopefully he wouldn't have to look too hard. Ah hah. There it was, right on top of the nightstand. He grabbed it and slipped out of the room. He stood in the hallway and flipped it open.

_Well, here's my journal. I don't really know what to write. Splinter said it could help solve problems. Maybe it will, but I admit I'm a little skeptical. _

Maybe Leo wasn't as much of a dork as he'd always thought. He turned to the next entry.

_Today, Raph took me down during training. He is always so smug about it._

That's right Leo. Cry into your journal, you baby.

_I wonder if he is like that because he feels insecure about himself. _

I'm like that because I'm better than you, you dork, Raphael thought. With a growl, he flipped to the next page. He didn't need to read Leo's ego-tripping crap.

_I can't stop thinking about Karai. I know she's Shredder's daughter. I know she'll never leave the Foot. But I really thought – what if there's still a chance she will change? I know I give Donnie a hard time about April but honestly, I think I'm just as dumb about Karai. I wish that I didn't feel like this, but I can't change what I'm feeling inside. _

Wow. Did he actually feel sorry for Leo? It was totally dumb, Leo was right about that, but Raphael thought that maybe it wasn't so easy to let go. It was complicated.

That's why he made it personal goal to never develop any feelings of attachment to a girl. What could be more pointless than getting one's hopes up when no girl would ever like a turtle anyway? He could just save himself the trouble by not even thinking about it. Not that he didn't, like Mikey, appreciate a nice set of melons, but it was incredibly stupid to feel anything beyond a simple appreciation of the female form. Once feelings get involved, it just gets messy and stupid. Case in point: Donnie. Case in point: Leo. There you have it.

Still, he kind of felt sorry for his brothers and their hopeless crushes, even if it was their own fault. He closed up Leo's journal and quietly replaced it.

Now...to see if Splinter practiced what he preached.

[to be continued]


	2. Chapter 2

Raphael drew a deep breath as he readied to enter Splinter's room. Splinter's sleeping patterns were erratic, so he had no guarantee that his sensei would not wake up. He stood at the threshold for a moment, sweating bullets.

Am I seriously going to do this? he asked himself. Splinter will kill me if I do this and he catches me!

At this point, however, his curiosity had reached an unbearable pitch. What on earth would sensei write about if he did actually keep a journal? Some of it might be really personal.

I won't actually read it, Raphael told himself. I just want to see if he actually has them.

As silently as possible, Raphael slipped into Splinter's room. He glanced around. He had only been in the room a handful of times, so he wasn't sure where Splinter might stash a journal. He walked over to the closet and saw a cardboard box. Curious, he opened it, thinking that maybe it had some of the turtles' old toys in it or something.

His jaw dropped when he saw that the whole box was full of leather journals identical to the ones that Splinter had given to each of them.

With a quick glance back at Splinter, he lifted up the whole box and stealthily left the room. Then, he hurried back to his own room and locked the door.

His heart was racing. What the heck was that? He had promised himself that he wouldn't look at Splinter's journals. But now that he had them in his hands the adrenaline rush of having successfully taken them overwhelmed him. There was no going back now. Slowly, shakily, he lifted up the journal on top.

They're probably just blank spares, he told himself. That's all.

But when the book opened, Raphael gasped to see the miniscule, tightly cramped Japanese script that covered nearly every square millimeter of the pages. He laid the journal down and picked up another. It was the same. These were Splinter's archives—how far back did they go? He went through all of the books until he found the one that looked the most worn and opened it to the first page.

He squinted; Splinter truly had written in these as though unsure when he would find paper again. The script was tiny. Furthermore, it had been a long time since Raphael had read anything in Japanese. Even then, they were usually mangas. Manga definitely used its own specific dialect. Proper, formal Japanese? They had not actively used or learned it for at least five years.

Granted, Raphael knew every Japanese swear word in existence, and of course he understood all things related to ninjutsu and discipline.

Maybe, with a little practice, it will come back to me, Raphael thought. There. That's the date. December 24, 1998.

Whoa. We only would have been like one year old then.

As his recognition of the Japanese characters and words slowly flowed back to him, Raphael began to read.

_I must say, I have never celebrated Christmas before. My family tended to cling to the old ways, resisting the Westernization that crept across Japan. But I am in America now. I have left my home behind. Perhaps I would do well to teach these turtles of mine the traditions of their own country, in addition to my own. _

_Unfortunately, all I have to offer them is garbage, what I can scrounge from the dumpsters and alleyways above. There will be little celebration, but perhaps I can cobble something together. I will go out and see what I can find. _

_December 25, 1998_

_A crafts store had many scraps of fabric in their dumpster. It was good quality, heavy fabric. I draped them around the little tree like garlands. I'm not sure if these colors are really Christmaslike, but they are bright and colorful. The turtles were very excited about the whole thing. Michelangelo showed his appreciation by sucking on the end of some of the orange fabric. Then he proceeded to choke on it. I definitely wonder about him. _

Raphael laughed out loud, then clapped his hands over his mouth. Hopefully he didn't wake anyone up.

_There is enough fabric that I used some to make masks for the boys after I decorated the tree. I decided that Michelangelo should have the orange, since he seemed to like it so much. Raphael and Leo fought over the blue mask until I broke them up. Donatello looked as though he thought I was mad to be suggesting that he cover his face with it. When I finally got them to wear the scraps of fabric, they looked so cute. The little bandanas on their faces—adorable! I love my little turtles._

Raphael felt very strange. He knew that he was definitely trespassing into a part of Splinter's personality that he had never realized before. Splinter had always seemed so solemn and distant. It was not that Splinter did not express love; indeed, Raphael recalled Splinter actually saying "I love you" on a few occasions. This, however, was far more gushy that Raphael expected his sensei was capable of. With a shrug, he flipped forward near to the end of the book and started reading again.

_September 29, 2000_

_Three years. It seems like so much longer. I feel as though everything I once knew was an entire lifetime ago. I should be happy that I have my new family, but I am not. I feel the darkness again. I haven't felt it for nearly two and a half years. I do not know what has changed. Perhaps it is simply the time of year? Yet last year, I did not feel so depressed. So why? What has changed?_

_I can hear Donatello running around in the other room. I should go out and greet him. But even louder than the sound of his footsteps are the whisperings of my sword. Whispers I have not heard for so long. _

_Maybe he will come in here. Maybe he will come in and save me again, talk to me, bring me out of the darkness. If I just see his face—any of their faces—maybe the thoughts of death will subside._

Raphael's stomach felt like it had been plunged into a bucket of ice. Whispering swords? Thoughts of death?

_No. I will have to make them subside on my own. I cannot rely on children to help me. When Donatello first spoke to me two and a half years ago, it renewed my desire to live. What could he do now that would drive away the suicidal urges? I must find that answer inside of myself. _

Suicide? Splinter?

Splinter was a rock. He was impervious. How could he—_he was really thinking about suicide?_ Raphael's mind was spinning.

_I am ninja. I am strong. I will persevere through this for these little ones who have become my sons. Perhaps these thoughts will come and go, and I must learn to survive them as they do. _

_Now I hear Leonardo calling for me. "Spinner-san," he calls me, adorable child. How I wish I had taught them to call me father. By the time I thought of them as sons, they were already calling me by my name. It is too late to teach them differently. _

_I have the strength inside of myself to do this. I will get up from my bed. I will not go to my blade. I will go to my sons. _

Raphael slammed the journal shut. His heart was racing. They were only three! Three years old, and Splinter was thinking about killing himself! What if he had?

He hadn't. He had survived his ordeal.

But the thing that stunned Raphael the most was that apparently this had happened to Splinter before. Raphael knew that Donnie was the first one of them to speak, but he hadn't realized that somehow Donnie's talking to Splinter that kept their sensei from taking his own life.

Did Splinter—

Did he still think about killing himself?

The thought sent shivers down Raphael's spine. He imagined walking into Splinter's room and seeing his sensei lying dead on the floor.

Raphael suppressed a desire to vomit.

Please, Master Splinter, he thought. Please tell me that you don't think about that anymore.

Putting down the old, battered journal, Raphael grabbed a newer looking one and cracked it open.

_July 16, 2008_

_I swear I am going to kill him. Heaven help me, I will break his neck if he does not stop driving me insane. Twelve years old, but of course being able to properly handle sai makes him so much superior to his brothers. Twelve years old, but of course his sensei couldn't possibly teach him anything. Twelve years old and twelve years worth of being the biggest pain in my…_

Raphael grinned wickedly. I love you too, sensei, he thought.

_Of course, it's just because he's too much like me that he drives me insane. I was rather like that too. I assumed that courage was contingent on being the strongest; that my raw fighting skills were enough to make me the best. It wasn't until my own sensei finally knocked some sense into me that I understood the ways of the true ninja. _

_Heaven knows I have tried knocking sense into the boy. But Raphael is…a special kind of stubborn. I fear that I cannot teach him to let go of his anger or teach him to embrace patience. _

_Just as our sensei could not teach Oroku Saki to change his ways. _

Raphael nearly yelled. Shredder? Splinter was worried that he was going to be like _Shredder_?

_But if I had embraced my sensei's lessons sooner, before I had contributed our petty feud, would Tang Shen and Miwa still be alive? I can never know. Nevertheless, I pray endlessly that Raphael will not choose the path that I chose—the path that Tang Shen saved me from. If I had stayed on that path, perhaps I would have been no different than my enemy. _

_Will Raphael listen to my lessons? Will he take what I say to heart? _

_Will he, like me, learn too late?_

Hands shaking, Raphael shut the journal. Silently, he organized them in the box the way he had found them. He stole back into Splinter's room and returned the box to its place in the closet.

He drew a deep breath and released it silently as he stared at his sleeping sensei.

Splinter seemed so serene as he lay there. His chest slowly rose and fell. Occasionally, his nose and ears twitched slightly. To the outsider, he looked perfectly content.

To Raphael, he looked like a mystery. Splinter: solemn, stoic, disciplinarian Splinter, thought his sons had been _cute_ as babies. Peaceful, rational, meditative Splinter, a calm ocean of zen, thought about ending his own life. Splinter had regrets. Fears.

Did he have nightmares, too?

How could Splinter contain everything? With all of those conflicting feeling, Raphael probably would have exploded trying to hold them in. How did Splinter manage it?

Then, Raphael noticed a considerably newer leather journal lying on the floor next to Splinter's bed.

Silently, Raphael went back to his room. He shut the door softly behind him, undid his red mask, and looped it around the knob on his bed frame. He crawled into bed, but before he shut off the light, he picked up a pen and took his journal from the nightstand.

He put the pen to the first blank page. Clumsy, unpracticed Japanese characters flowed from the nib onto the paper.

_Courage comes in many forms. Strength, in many shapes. _

_Without either of these things, there can be no leadership. There can be no intelligence. There can be no joy and heart. But neither courage nor strength look the same to everyone. They do not even always look the same to one person. _

_I, however, have been given the insight to see that courage and strength have a name and a face. _

_And I will do everything in my power to be like the man that embodies them._

Wow, thought Raphael. That's just about the cheesiest thing I have ever thought, let alone written down.

He was about to close the journal when he realized that he wanted a bookmark, even though it was just the first page. He got up and rummaged around in his closet until he found what he wanted. A tiny red scrap of fabric: the first bandana he had ever worn. He laid it between the pages and shut the journal. Then, with a yawn, he crawled back into bed and turned out the light.

He smiled when he felt Spike crawl onto the bed with him, and with a sigh of content, he fell asleep.

The End

* * *

Thanks for reading, everyone. Let me know what you think. If you want to read more of my stories, also check out my latest, "The Girl Next Door."


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